abe the good dwarf A little theme for wordpress, please recycle.

The BAD prototype seeks to address the need for technologically augmented clothing that prevents injury and promotes a healthy lifestyle. This garment is one of a series that would allow for the portability of a device that ambiently prompts the user to be conscious of his/her body mechanics. The idea of posture awareness is promoted by physical therapists and yoga instructors alike. BAD seeks to address laptop hunch in a fashion conscious manner.

futurecraft-design-proposal.pdf

Millions of people every year experience back and neck pain as a result of poor ergonomic working conditions. When you work on your laptop for an extended period of time many times you will end up sore and stiff afterwards. My proposal is to create a device which gently reminds you that it is time to be aware of your posture without interrupting your work.

Conditions to consider when developing the project were: the sensory interaction between the “machine” and the user, psychological affects of the device, wearability, portability, durability and style.

The human machine interaction was of primary importance. The goal of the project is to create a non-invasive reminder for the user to be conscious of his/her posture. My research has indicated that to be effective the reminder will need to occur every 20 minutes.

The differen approaches that have been considered are: a vibrating piece of jewelry (necklace, bracelet), a vibrating piece of clothing (shirt, jacket, dress), a widget that sends out a auditory or visual cue every 15 minutes, a vibrating widget that via bluetooth sends out a message for a passive embedded device to vibrate in either a chair pad or piece of clothing.

Toilet Paper Rolls, how many of those have you thrown out or recycled over the course of your life????

Probably more than you would like to admit….

here is a shot of a beautiful toilet paper roll, there is beauty in the simple banal object, I believe it and so should you!

People are doing recycled cardboard art, installations etc….

I propose a screening system that could serve as a movable partition within an apartment or house that is created entirely from toilet paper rolls.

Hey all, my environmental cause is the Surfrider Foundation. This group is something that I care about because of my long time interest in surfing.

Surfrider.org

The objectives of the organization are:
1. Clean Water - the preservation of our oceans
2. Beach Access - the promotion of the right to low impact, free and open access to our beaches and waves.
3. Beach Preservation - the protection of beaches because of their unique ecological, economic and recreational value.
4. Protecting Special Places - Many of our marine ecologies have suffered from the mismanagement of fisheries, pollution and coastal development.

These objectives are inline with my priorities as a surfer and a human.

Here is a link to the Boston chapter:
Boston Surfrider

The Boston chapter is working on getting a Beaches Bill passed

The Massachusetts Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation authored, with the help of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, the Beaches Act.

The Beaches Act is a Bill that requires:

Uniform water quality standards for coastal and inland public beach waters.

Establishment of consistent beach water testing procedures (a minimum of weekly water testing).

The public to be informed about unsafe waters by posting notices at beaches when the water is polluted.

The Beaches Act will protect public safety, improve environmental quality through identification of pollution sources, and will provide resources to municipalities to help with testing.

The meet in Cambridge and are looking for members….here is the address…

Wainswright Bank Community Room
647 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA

I’ve got a problem…..along with many other bipedal humans, biomechanics.

As a result of a host of injuries from sports and the fact that I am not the “average” size human I’ve developed issues with my back, knees, neck, etc…

While considering what I should do for this project I immediately began thinking about some kind of prosthetic device that could potentially alleviate some of the
pains that I deal with every day as a result of using my laptop too much, sitting at a desk that has been raised but now is too high and a list of other issues.

So I began to research prosthetics and ergonomics, this led me to an idea about a portable ergonomics kit. This kit would allow me to easily transport all the necessary devices
to allow for my comfort whether I was in class, in my studio or at home.

Items that come to mind that I would like to have in this sort of pack are my lumbar support back pillow, a seat raiser (for my studio), a foot rest, something to raise my work surface, etc.

All of these items would have to be extremely compressible to allow for maximum portability….so the idea was about a teeny-tiny ergonomics pack.

That lead me to the idea of a suit that would monitor my body mechanics.

This suit would be easily worn under your clothes and would allow you to monitor your body position. The device would send feedback to your laptop and would plug in via a USB port kind of like all of your other peripherals.

Originally I was thinking of this suit as a bodysuit, kind of like a wetsuit, but breathable. Maybe something that could be connect via Bluetooth rather than through a USB.

The way in which the data would be presented would be a small 3d model of you and hot spots that would alert you to high strain/stress areas of your current position. This would allow you to monitor your position while working at your laptop in a non-intrusive manner. The 3D representation would be like a Widget or the Weatherbug.

So this device would provide constant feedback as to your body mechanics. More importantly it would promote body awareness that would easily allow for you to monitor performance, saving a history for later discussion with a physical therapist or doctor.

After doing some research I learned that there are currently suits that monitor body mechanics for old people and severly injured hospital patients. But there is not a device that would allow for the active monitoring that is portable and easy to interact. These suits require a doctor to interpret results. Here are some links to sites that have developed some technology that I just mentioned.

BioMechanics Research Lab

and

MiniSun Health Monitor

Other potential applications would be for athletes while playing sports, running, swimming, biking etc. and for body language monitoring, think sales people, executives, etc.

Finally I have all of the parts that are needed to complete this project! This past Saturday I tried to finish it off, but ran into some issues with soldering the capacitors diode to the vibrating motors metal casing.

The casing is meant to be roughened up a bit to make it suitable for soldering. I sanded the motor, but I believe that I did not make it quite rough enough. My directions mention that a Dremel would work best, but I don’t currently own one. Do we have dremels available to us in the Medialab shop?

My original objective was to attempt to make a material that is traditionally thought of as unconductive conductive. So that led me to experiment with rubber latex.

My first test was an attempt to embed metal dust into the latex to change the material properties of the rubber. So I mixed graphite with latex and let it cure.

My next test involved embedding aluminum mesh…it was both conductive and structural.

Here is a demonstration of its structural properties…

After this initial fascination I developed an interest in the skin structural aspects of the combination of latex and metal.

Then I tried to integrate small aluminum bars, where they could serve structural and service requirements.

After this I embedded piano wire…..

BEAM robotics was something that I came across on Make Magazine’s website and their Podcast. So I figured I would check it out and give it a go.

Once I viewed this video I was under the impression that I could easily build myself a “simple” little robot!

BEAM is a triple acronym which stands for:

Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics
Building Evolution Anarchy Modularity
Biotechnology Ethnology Analogy Morphology

BEAM robotics is a new field of robotics. It uses minimalist electronics to create elegant mechanical creatures that parallel their natural counterparts in many ways.

BEAM robotics basically starts from 3 philosophical tenets:

Use minimalist electronics
This keeps complexity from “snowballing”, and keeps costs down
Recycle & reuse components out of technoscrap
This keeps things cheap, and avoids a lot of trips to parts stores; virtually all the parts required to make a BEAM robot can be found in broken electronics (ovens, walkman’s, CD players, VCRs, pagers…).
Solar power your critter if possible
While less powerful than even a small battery (and, up-front, more expensive), solar cell s last for years; solar-powered BEAMbots don’t require constant battery replacements or down-time for battery recharging.

So I began to accumulate the required materials….from the list on the website.

Quant Part Solarbotics Parts # Notes
1 Pager Motor #RPM2 With weight still attached
1 3v Solar Cell #SC2433 Any 3v cells, such as the 24mm x 33mm ones SB sells
1 4700uF cap #CP4700uF N/A
1 2N3904 NPN transistors #TR3904 N/A
1 2N3906 PNP transistors #TR3906 N/A
1 Flashing LEDs #FLED N/A
1 2.2K-ohm resistors #R2.2k N/A
N/A Heat Shrink Tubing N/A Radio Shack has an assortment in various sizes. You’ll want tubing all the way up to 2″ dia.
1 Medium-Size Paper Clip N/A N/A
N/A Guitar String N/A N/A
N/A Red and Black Hook-Up Wire N/A Used to attach solar cell to SE circuit

But the solar cells were not quite large enough according to the requirements, so I bought a couple of solar powered exterior lawn lights.

Then I thought, gee I don’t have a vibrating pager type motor, I better buy something that vibrates so that I am totally sure this thing is going to work……

Well then I took both the lights and the game controller apart, which was fun!

Then came time for assembly………..but I soon learned that the parts list on the website was not accompanied by a detailed set of instructions, only a schematic and a picture of the finished robot. So I scavenged around and found the physical Make magazine that had that projecd in it. But the project in the magazine required a 1381-G voltage trigger which I didn’t have.

So I began by attempting to read the schematic and free form the circuits. Though I have never had to read a schematic before, so I went to my book, Robot Building for beginners and it had an extremely basic description of how a schematic is meant to be read and two of the very vital components that were on my schematic were not on theirs, the trigger and the capacitors.

Here is the schematic that I was working from, it seems sooooooooooooo simple!

Well, I forgot to mention that I had never soldered before in my life….so it wasn’t pretty……I soldered the first “circuit” together as far as I could read from the schematic and then I started to attach the capacitors directly to the engine as described in the magazine. Well it wasn’t long before my solder connections started to fall off all over the place.

An expert on the subject, Zunk writes “While traditional approaches essentially start with a “brain,” and attempt to build robots “downward” from that, BEAM robotics starts from simple reflexes, in a “bottoms-up” approach. The majority of BEAM robots are non-computerized (although simple CPUs can be used to drive them, in a “horse and rider” sort of way). Unlike many traditional processor-based robots, BEAM robots are cheap, simple, and can be built by a hobbyist with basic skills in a matter of hours.” Almost, but not quite…….

There were some tools that I needed that were not mentioned in the required parts list on the website, maybe they assumed I already had an electronics workshop. To finish I will need a third hand tool, for soldering the joints, poster putty and a dremel.

So unfortunately it is not done…..but I plan on finishing it this week, I spent way too much time and money on it not to finish it, and maybe it will be up on the site next week?

So I finished the robot the other day. It works and I am happy to have finished the project. I think solar power is definitely something I am excited about working with and this is a great way for a beginner to get to know what solar is all about.

Here it is!

this project was fun because it allowed me to explore an interest in time machines.

the project began with an ordinary, generic alarm clock. I then opened it up with a screwdriver and this gave me a view of the injection molded shell and the hand assembled interior. The case makes a very poor attempt at looking “futuristic” while the brand “Seth Thomas” attempts to reference a Victorian era with its script font.

Here is the disassembly of my beautiful clock.

In this picture the LED and its connectos are shown in detail.

The clock is no more, it is only blood and guts.

Here is the new chipboard case.